Good (Business) Writing

Everyone writes, but not everyone writes well.

Have you ever found yourself reading about a topic you never thought you’d be interested in? It’s probably because the writing is good. It’s enjoyable to read a well-written article regardless of the content, just like it’s enjoyable to watch well-shot film—even if the storyline is mediocre.

It’s easy to spot good writing but hard to do it in practice. I think the best resources which cover the basics of good writing are:

• George Orwell: Politics and the English Language [key takeaways below]
• William Zinsser: On Writing Well [key takeaways below]
• Scott Adams: The Day You Became a Better Writer [full text below]
• Paul Graham: Writing, Briefly [full text below]

When you write, you’re talking to a human. If you want to check how conversational your writing is, ask someone to read it back to you and—honestly—ask yourself whether it sounds like they’re talking to you or reading from a page.

And remember—good writing is hard. Your first draft will always have (plenty of) room for improvement. Don’t be shy to ask others to read your writing and share their thoughts, or redraft for you. Be humble, and don’t be afraid to imitate the best writers you know. You’ll likely end with a style of writing that combines their approach with your quirks. And that will become your writing. But don’t plagiarise someone else’s content wholesale—that’s just bad.

Everything else you need to know about good business writing is covered below by George Orwell, William Zinsser, Paul Graham and Scott Adams. Total read time is seven minutes.

Good luck.

George Orwell: Politics and the English Language [Notes]

Never use a metaphor, simile or idiom which you’re used to seeing in print. Ask yourself:

1. What image or idiom will make my writing clearer?

2. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Also:

1. Never use a long word when a short one will do.

2. If it’s possible to cut a word, always cut it.

3. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active voice.

William Zinsser: On Writing Well [Notes]

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components:

• Cut words
• Replace long words with shorter ones
• Keep your paragraphs short

Write and rewrite constantly. A good teaching tool is to bracket unnecessary clutter. That way the student is given the option to improve, which is more empowering. Here are some examples of removing clutter:

• cut (out) words
• head (up) a committee
• free (up) a few minutes
• face (up to) a problem
• a (personal) friend of mine
• currently / presently / at the present time → now / today
• we are experiencing rain → it is raining
• are you experiencing pain? → does it hurt?
• assistance → help
• numerous → many
• facilitate → ease
• remainder → rest
• initial → first
• implement → do
• sufficient → enough
• attempt → try
• referred to as → called
• with the possible exception of → except
• due to the fact that → because
• he totally lacked the ability to → he couldn’t
• for the purpose of → for

Ensure you write with unity of:

• Pronoun
• Tense
• Mood

Start and end:

• The most important sentence in any article is the first one. Cajole the reader with freshness, novelty, a paradox, humour, surprise, an unusual idea, interesting fact or a question. Also take special care with the last sentence of a paragraph—it’s the crucial springboard to the next paragraph.
• When you’re ready to stop, stop. When you’ve presented all the facts, wrap up.

Adjectives and adverbs:

• Make adjectives do the work for you, rather than simply being decorative. “He looked at the grey sky and the black clouds and decided to sail back home”. The adjectives explain the decision.
• Cut unnecessary adverbs: prune “a bit,” “a little,” “sort of,” “kind of,” “rather,” “quite,” “very,” “too,” “pretty much.” Don’t say you were quite depressed and a bit annoyed and sort of tired and somewhat confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Good writing is lean and confident.

Punctuation:

• Use plain declarative sentences. Use full-stops regularly. Avoid commas wherever possible. A sentence shouldn’t contain more than one thought.
• Avoid using semicolons—they reduce the pace of your writing. Stick to full-stops and em-dashes for dynamism.
• Use exclamation marks sparingly for devastating effect. Don’t use them for humour—they lack subtlety.
• Contractions are fine—they help you recreate the natural patterns of conversation.
• It’s fine to start a sentence with ‘but’.

Scott Adams: The Day You Became a Better Writer [Full Text]

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.

Paul Graham: Writing, Briefly [Full Text]

I think it’s far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you’re bad at writing and don’t like to do it, you’ll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated.

As for how to write well, here’s the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut out everything unnecessary; write in a conversational tone; develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you can’t get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said; expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag; don’t (always) make detailed outlines; mull ideas over for a few days before writing; carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you; start writing when you think of the first sentence; if a deadline forces you to start before that, just say the most important sentence first; write about stuff you like; don’t try to sound impressive; don’t hesitate to change the topic on the fly; use footnotes to contain digressions; use anaphora to knit sentences together; read your essays out loud to see (a) where you stumble over awkward phrases and (b) which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading); try to tell the reader something new and useful; work in fairly big quanta of time; when you restart, begin by rereading what you have so far; when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with; accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file; don’t feel obliged to cover any of them; write for a reader who won’t read the essay as carefully as you do, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you’ll regret most; go back and tone down harsh remarks; publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas; print out drafts instead of just looking at them on the screen; use simple, germanic words; learn to distinguish surprises from digressions; learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it.

Some other examples of good business writing

• Intercom’s blog
• This Sequoia article (count the number of commas in the entire piece)
• Sam Altman’s Startup Playbook